There’s definitely a difference between leaking secret information to the public, and keeping it yourself to use for your own purposes. Without getting into which one is worse, surely you can see they’re not really comparable.

If Donald Trump had declassified the docs and shared them publicly, we would be having a totally different conversation, and he wouldn’t be under federal indictment.

Hello? The purpose of the classification is to keep the information secret. Do you seriously believe that printing the info on the front page is somehow not as indictment-worthy as keeping the documents stashed away?

The reality is that what Trump did by hiding the papers was much more consistent with the spirit of classification than what the NYT did with the Pentagon papers.

Responsible actors will try to balance security with transparency. It is not surprising that a newspaper would have a different view on where the right balance lies than the government. You might disagree with the NYT editors’ judgment, but they decided it was worth harming national security to expose government lies about the Vietnam War.

Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and refusal to give them back did nothing to increase transparency, because Trump did not make any information public. So it’s not surprising that the NYT views Trump’s actions differently than Ellsberg’s.

Trump isn't being charged for having classified documents in an insecured manner. He's being charged for refusing to give them back after being asked, lying about having them, and obstructing officials trying to get them back from him.

Don't forget sharing classified information with people that didn't have the proper clearance

They never get you for the crime, always for the attempt to hide it.

The content and context matters. The response would have been different if he had leaked random material rather than the Pentagon Papers, which showed heinous behavior by our government.